


Realization

by Olorisstra



Series: Hydrospanner in the works [7]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Dark Side tendencies on Mad's part, M for implied violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 22:56:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7073977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olorisstra/pseuds/Olorisstra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts like a feeling of creeping pin and needles, running over his bare skin and sliding under his clothes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Realization

It starts like a feeling of creeping pin and needles, running over his bare skin and sliding under his clothes. Not unlike how Six O'Clock believes marching ants might feel, he thinks as it intensifies, growing to resemble pinches trying to break his skin. It makes him yelp and wriggle, as he tries to understand what’s wrong.

There are steps outside the door of the suite they’ve been given and the feeling starts retreating to marching ants as the one walking gets past their rooms and down the corridor, until his skin is crawling with unease but he finds himself otherwise unhurt.

When he gathers himself enough to pop his head out, sliding under Thrive’s arm to get to the main door and losing the string that held his waist-length braid together in the process, no one is there. There are only dark tendrils in the air, slowly dissipating even as he watches them.

He stretches an arm, reaching out to try and touch one, and ends up flailing when Thrive tugs him back by his hair. It’s a sharp enough motion that he ends up falling on his ass, his back against Thrive’s legs, head pressing against Thrive’s knees as he tilts it back to look up at his scowling twin.

 _You are a **moron**_. Thrive scolds in their minds. _Didn’t you realize how **wrong** that felt?_

 _Of course I did!_ Six O'Clock bristles back. _It’s why I went to check it out!_.

Thrive watches him, the dark green-blue eyes they share flatly disbelieving in a way that it’s frankly insulting. After a moment, he sighs, sounding resigned in their minds.

 _A **moron**. I have a **moron** for a twin_. Thrive laments in their heads, as if Six O'Clock can’t hear him. He’d get offended, but it’s a fond kind of resignation, deeply tinged with the affection Thrive has for him.

He sends a light mental push to Thrive, just enough to make him step back enough to allow Six O'Clock to scramble back up on his feet, patting his clothes to check they haven’t gotten dirty.

 _Whatever or whoever it is, they are heading for Tee Four and the troopers_. He points out, his worry bleeding into his words and making them sound more anxious than he would like, even though he is kind of anxious about that possibility, now that he’s thought of it.

 _I know_. Thrive replies, brows creasing slightly as an external expression of what Six O'Clock knows to be an impressive mental frown.

They are still in the first stages of getting used to having eyes to see along with faces and bodies to express emotions and meanings. It’s hard, as they are unused to do so, and most of the time they end up looking more blank-faced than anything else.

It’s hard to be in bodies that can move, too. They have to keep reminding each other, more Thrive to Six'Clock than not the other way around honestly, not to leave their bodies behind when they look around, lest the Kaminoans start seeing them as defective and take action to deactivate or recondition them.

 _Nothing and no one enters this facility without the Kaminoans knowing. They **must** be aware of this presence._ Thrives decides, after a few moments of internal debate and before Six O'Clock can gather himself enough to urge his twin into action.

 _I am warning Tee Four. If he needs us, he will let us know_. Thrive adds, raising a hand to pacify Six O'Clock, a gesture that he thinks Thrive has become unnecessarily fond of. He scowls at him, remembering after a couple of moments to narrow his eyes at Thrive, to add the physical component to the mental impression.

 _You have no sense of adventure_. He mutters, feeling thwarted and not appreciating it in the slightest.

 _You have no sense of self-preservation_. Thrive chides him immediately. _We are not supposed to leave unaccompanied. Do you want them to crack down on our limits or to try and re-condition us?_

Six O'Clock winces, bowing his head a bit as a shudder goes through his body, at the mention of the re-conditioning process. _Sorry, I didn’t think about that_. He murmurs.

 _ **Moron**_. Thrives repeats, with a deeply fond sigh. _Come. I’ll remake your braid for you_. He offers, extending his hand towards his twin.

Six O'Clock looks once more at the now tendrils-free air of the corridor and then nods, taking Thrive’s hand and following him back to the fresher.

If he’s unable to stop feeling let down, at least he knows that his twin gets it.

If the Kaminoans hadn’t been there to curtail their freedom, they so would have followed that trail.

* * *

Mad’s lips thin as he starts concealing himself in the simulation room.

The twins, as they see themselves, are _loud_. Tee Four, the one with the troopers, and the five-in-one, young and still in the tanks, are easy and clear to hear too but neither of them is half as noisy as the twins.

It is a relief to find out that not all of those-left-behind have been scrapped. It is also maddening to find out how _coddled_ they have been, left to grow in shining little examples of the Light. Untrained too, all of them, left to blindly grope, in secrecy, towards figuring out basics that he has been long since made to develop.

Pampered lot, all of them. It makes his gut churn, to think of how lighthearted they have all been allowed to become, with no one to pay the price of their freedom but him and his others, hidden away in their rooms on the opposite end of the facility.

He feels his rage flare wildly and he lets it, wrapping himself in it. Curling up in his hiding spot and using it to hide himself better, as he watches the clone troopers file in.

These are the soldiers for whom the CL-OWK series, his series, was made for, if all the things he’s been eavesdropping and picking up off the open channels of those-left-behind are true.

The clone troopers made for the Jedi.

The clone troopers those-left-behind have been hanging out with, getting hugged and having their hair ruffled and generally being good little mascots.

The clone troopers he was made to be especially bad for.

The clone troopers _his others_ would have been made to be especially bad for, if he hadn’t stepped forward and excelled at it.

The clone troopers he has come here to beat up and scare, to show them a Dark Side user and teach them to react to it by firing first and asking questions later.

Mad shows his teeth, deeply pleased.

He will _enjoy_ this.

* * *

Wolffe doesn’t know what they are up for now, but he has a gut feeling that it is going to be bad.

It’s something about the feel of the sim room they are in. 

His skin has started crawling the moment he stepped inside and the sensation has only grown force as the sim has unfolded.

They are engaged in a textbook sim against the clankers and they are handling it with minimum injuries and no casualties. Some of his brothers are cheering, calling it ‘one for the books’ but Wolffe doesn’t have it in himself to agree. There is something _**wrong**_ in the room with them.

He has a bad feeling about this.

Soft laughter rakes it’s nails in his head as soon as he thinks that, leaving behind a blazing pain that drives him to his knees, trying to swear with a suddenly numb mouth as his vision doubles and wobbles.

Something short and black drops down from up high, right behind Wolffe’s soldiers, who have turned their backs to the danger in reaction to his own fall. He tries to speak, to warn them, but his tongue feels dead in his mouth and the black thing is a blur with a flashing edge of vibrosteel.

Wolffe’s men go down before he can finish opening his mouth, four of them flying off in two different directions, landing badly on the outcrops on his left and far left.

He struggles, refusing to go down like this, and orders to his body to straighten up, to raise his rifle in the general direction of the blur, as his vision comes back into focus.

The weapon flows out of his hands before he can even line it up and his back hits the rocky terrain, driving the air out of his lungs. Invisible fingers wrap around his throat and the feeling of _wrongness_ intensifies as he struggles against the nothingness that is holding him down.

He can’t move.

He can’t breathe.

He can see lightning shorting out advancing droids, making them explode, and it makes no sense because it’s either him and his brother or the enemy, isn’t it there?

The blur stops and turns to him, an arm raising and raising him too, until his feet are hanging in the air and he can do nothing but try to claw at the empty air squeezing his throat tight, his vision filling with black spots.

He sees a black cloak, with dark grey and black Jedi-like clothes under it, a crimson belt standing out enough to catch his attention for a moment, before the figure’s head rises. Then he can’t see anything but red eyes outlined in thick black and cuts and scars littering a face that is far too young to be that twisted, that furious.

He can feel bile rise in his throat, wrongness creeping on his screen, a voice screaming in his head to run, to fight, to destroy, to fear. 

He looks in the red eyes and sees death in them.

All goes black.

* * *

Wolffe comes back to himself with a pounding headache and enough aches to feel like an AT-TE has run him over. He grits his teeth around a groan and turns to look at the bed next to his.

Sinker is there, an arm in a sling and his face brilliantly black and violet with bruises.

“What the hell?” He growls, pushing himself up on his elbows and then regretting it when his body screams at him to _lie the kriff back down, you stupid meathead_. He can hear the reassuring presence of their boy T4 nearby, moving clockwise in his direction, and he sprawls back down.

“They put us against a Dark Side user. Dane is covered in hives, that apparently started along with a rash as soon as we came into the sim room. The Kaminoans thinks it’s _fascinating_.” Sinker reports with a frown.

“Well, kriff.” Wolffe says, because he can’t find anything else to say, the red eyes and ruined face emblazoned into his mind.

If that’s what Dark Force users are like, they need to double up and get down to train themselves at much higher standards. It is unthinkable to be that much of a useless slag heap to their Jedi, when the time in the field will come, and even more so to let them deal with that kind of threat alone.

They need to start developing counter-techniques and they need to do it fast.


End file.
